


Vermis Vallis

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, making up some eris whereabouts, minor warmind spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 00:44:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14508777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: The Hive move away, and Eris moves with them.She is not gone, however, and information is always required.





	Vermis Vallis

The worm comes to her in dreams. 

It is long and white, swollen with tithe. When she takes her attention off of it she can feel it move closer to her, like it wants to bite at her arms. Like it wants to swallow her whole and take her rotting back to the Moon. 

It does not do this. It says: come with us to the stars. I offer the knowledge you have sought for so many years. There is a way to [defeat/join] the ones you so despise, as long as you are stronger. We are cast-offs as you are, turning away [fearing/cunning] from the strongest. 

She looks long and hard at it, eyes squinted and strangely-fitted in her sockets, her vision bright and desaturated around the edges. She knows this is a dream because in her dreams she has two eyes. This used to feel like torture— a glimpse back into who she was, what she was, dangling normalcy in her face just before she woke up screaming. Now it is a tool, like so many other things. 

The worm says: aren’t you a tool, now? Wouldn’t you like to be something more than what you have become, been shaped into by those around you? What would it feel like to break free? 

She does not respond, because arguments in throne-space are more than their words. She does think of this bargain, though, so much like the Sisters in miniature. This worm would mold her into a tool far beyond what she became in the Pit, stretch her hands ever-reaching outwards to consume. It would make her hungry when she had starved for decades among its children. 

She will not be hungry again. 

It shifts, curling tightly around itself. It does not say that it is hungry, that its nature binds it to this feeling, that to eat is to promise more death later. This is not the way one drives a deal. It says: I know of Nokris. We can show you the one[s] you seek. Vengeance is close enough to grasp… 

Eris Morn grins, teeth sharp and digging into her lower lip. Hunter teeth, Sai called them, whenever she took a bump too hard and turned her mouth into a red smear behind her helmet. Talking here is deadly but what does that matter to her, when death is already a certainty once again? She has had her vengeance, first Crota and then Oryx and soon enough these desperate worms. 

She says: I know where he is. 

The worm freezes over. 

She wakes to her middle eye burning with the realization that it still sits dug into her forehead. Even at five in the morning, her stomach feels full of nails pinned up against her abdomen. To talk to the worms she must be hungry, and being hungry means she could not eat yesterday. So she digs out of her covers slowly, unburrowing from what warmth she has aboard her ship. Most nights she leaves the heater off; sometimes to preserve gas, sometimes to remind herself of where she’s been before. Sometimes she can hear Ikora’s gentle lecturing and so she leaves it on, ship warm like Mercury. Since she learned of Mars she’s been leaving it on longer, higher. 

To talk to Xol she must be cold. 

At the helm of the ship she can see Hellas beneath her, white standing against red as sharp as the Legion against the Tower. There’s a charm hanging from the top of the console, a string of many-pointed stars, that Amanda strung up just after Oryx’s death. When the ship drifts the glass clinks into each other, chiming like birds. 

Oryx’s death, she thinks, as she often does. When he died she felt it in her stomach, a void filling. She almost misses the Dreadnaught, sometimes: she did not get to explore it as a Hunter, did not get to drop off of its great ledges to catch secrets before the vacuum took her away. It is a silly thing to miss, she knows, but everything is petty when viewed from far enough away. Even worms and waking gods and the whole system, full of mystery. 

She digs beneath the pilot’s chair for her box of rations. In the icebox there are grapes, fresh ones, red and purple and explosive when she bites into them. The green ones are more sour, easier on her stomach, but she’s grown used to avoiding them— the Lights that had something to prove always called them Hive-eyes when they caught her eating, giggled until she scared them away with Thrall chatter and her hunting knife. 

As she eats, she inventories her things: boots, furs, her battered console. Bray has been messaging her recently, more than Ikora or even Asher. Long sprawling lists of data, fact and possibility neatly separated in a way that she hasn’t gotten used to. Sometimes she wants to bridge the gap between informant and tentative friend, say that she understands or that, oh, I knew someone you would have loved, searching for answers in the dark… 

Those are not answers, though, and she does not know which Bray values more. So she offers what knowledge she has found, and what conclusions she has drawn. The Books offer nothing, of course, and the Grave is empty. The worms speak, though, and she listens carefully to what they whisper. Rasputin bleats music over her ship’s channel even when she keeps the firewall up, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. There are clues in the words that she does not understand, she knows— the tone of the music, the staticky Russian pouring in through her speakers the second her clock turns to midnight. 

When Bray meets the old Warmind Eris will ask her to send her regards. They are two old and lonely things. 

Her comm rings as she chews through the last of her meal. “Eris Morn,” she answers, mouth half-full, surveying what she has left. She’ll need to go back to the Tower soon to restock, assess where the Vanguard are in their efforts. There are some things Ikora will only say in person. 

“It’s Ana,” Bray says. She clucks her tongue, shuffles through something. “I’m back in Freehold, going through what files I can get access to. There’s redacted records— Hellas shipping lists, experiments. I think that’s really where it all started.” Eris can hear her grin through the comm-line. Hunter teeth. 

“And the Hive?” 

“They knew what was here, even then. I think they wanted Rasputin so that he couldn’t, you know, do what he did. Stop the Darkness long enough for whatever the Traveler had to do to save us.” 

Eris rolls the thought around in her head. “I think so,” she says, after a few seconds. “You have read the Books. But the threat we face is not within them. Be careful that you do not confuse the plans of the dead with the plans of the dying.” 

“Cryptic,” Bray says, more cheerful than the Hive-lore surrounding her. “I’m going to Hellas tomorrow. We’ll see for certain then. Would you like to come along? There might be something that we need translated, and I don’t know if Jinju can record everything in case we need it—” 

Companions as a two-fold source, Eris thinks: friendship and answers all combined. It is one of her questions solved. “I would not be of enough use to justify the risk,” she replies, leaning against the side window. From here she can almost see the gleaming half-buried wonders of a long-undead family. “I must be very careful, even now. Please meet the Hive you seek with ferocity I cannot deliver from orbit.” 

Ana laughs, and it almost sounds like the music Rasputin says hello with— major key, light, brief and ancient-feeling. “I will,” she says, “promise. Once it quiets down, you should come and see for yourself. I’ve heard what you’ve been doing.” 

“My job is one of necessity,” she answers, “though Nokris is becoming more and more of a threat. When the Worm is dead, we shall see.” 

“Glad to hear it,” Ana says, warm. “I’ll call tomorrow morning.”

The line cuts, and Eris moves to sit against her low mattress and think. This feels like something new, something not quite like revenge. How could this be revenge against Crota, Oryx, the High War itself if they do not acknowledge the Prince’s existence? This is against the Darkness, she supposes; the kingdom, not the King. Little victories slowly compounding into bigger ones. If only she could tell herself years ago, half-blind and crawling from the deep caverns, that Crota was a small victory in the face of all they had overcome. 

She’ll visit Hellas soon. She hasn’t been to Mars in decades, long enough for the nostalgia of Skyburners and abandoned Gates to settle into her mind. Maybe once she arrives she’ll tell Ana the stories of Warlocks and Hive-halls, study-halls, days on Venus and nights in the Moon.

For now, though, she is content to watch.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) the two emotions of "I already love Ana" & "Please let Eris come back" have been warring in my head all week
> 
> 2) someone stop me before I think too hard and this goes full crack ship 
> 
> 3) thanks for reading! comments appreciated, as always <3


End file.
